When Deadpool shoots, he kills, and when he pokes at the conventions of the superhero movie genre, he twists his katana. Tim Miller’s Deadpool is a satirical exercise in excess along the lines of Paul Verhoeven’s original Robocop—it is gratuitously violent, profane, and self-aware. And like Robocop, Deadpool manages…

This has been a tough year. Pop culture let us down in many ways, even as our political system and our social institutions revealed a deeper seam of ugliness. But speculative fiction still offers us hope: not just optimism about human ingenuity, but actual reasons to look forward and keep our heads up.

Jessica Jones, the second of Netflix’s original series drawn from Marvel comics, is the smartest entry into television’s already crowded cast of superheroes. Created by Melissa Rosenberg, best known for writing the Twilight movies, and starring the sardonic Krysten Ritter, the show is a slow unravelling of a familiar…

When Supergirl isn’t about competing with the absentee Superman (whose dreamlike cameos represent a vision of heroism that is so iconic, it can only be seen via abstraction, or synecdoche), it seems to be a show about women who show affection by criticizing and belittling each other. And weirdly, the show makes this…

The key conceit at the center of the new TV show Supergirl is that we never actually meet her cousin, Superman, but she’s constantly in his shadow. The show pushed this pretty far in last night’s episode, and it just did not work. Spoilers ahead!

It’s hard not to read Supergirl in the context of our ongoing culture war over what kind of heroes we’re allowed to value. And no, I’m not referring to gender issues (although Supergirl has plenty to say about them too) but the all-important grimdark-vs-fun schism in hero narratives.

Halloween is the one time of year that most people actually cosplay. But making your own costume from scratch is actually a lot of work. So there’s a whole industry dedicated to making costumes for you... with mixed results. Here are the trashiest and most WTF costumes for 2015.

Ronda Rousey has been vocal about her interest in portraying a certain Marvel superhero. When asked which one she was interested in during an August Reddit AMA, Rousey said she’d like to vie for the role of Captain Marvel. Shortly after, the unbeaten UFC women’s bantamweight champion posted several fan-art renditions…

Christine Ouzounian, former nanny to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s kids and to Affleck’s sexual needs, seems to be parlaying her newfound fame into a career in Hollywood. And Hollywood is apparently more than happy to facilitate one.

Patrick Macnee, who just died, embodied the ultimate gentleman adventurer for millions of people. As John Steed in The Avengers, he proved that an old-school gent could be ready for anything—whether it be robot killing machines, or a tough, self-assured lady in a catsuit.

Black Widow’s rise to badassery arguably began in 2004, when Richard K. Morgan wrote a miniseries that revamped her backstory and gave her a much stronger inner life. And now that we’re all talking about Black Widow in the wake of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Morgan has some thoughts about how to achieve her full…

This is kind of awesome. Eleven-year-old Rowan Hansen wrote to DC Comics asking why there weren't more female superheroes, and why the female heroes don't wear more practical costumes. They responded with a drawing of Hansen as a superhero. Her response: Thanks, but that's not what I asked for.

What an amazing year for cosplay! Hot dam,n you are all so talented and clever and creative it almost makes us mad. But we love you and all the great cosplay we saw this year. So as a tribute, here is a collection of our favorite cosplay moments from 2014.

It's that time of year again — the moment when we all realize we didn't get a Halloween costume yet. And luckily, a whole industry exists to sell us ready-made versions of popular characters. Here are the weirdest, (allegedly) sexiest and most random new costumes for sale in 2014!

News that Walmart is peddling a "Training to be Batman's Wife" T-shirt to juniors has raised ire for its retrograde bullshittery. Lost in the ruckus is the fact that it's not just offensive for its sexism — it's offensive because Batman is the type of douche that no woman would realistically go for. Surely there's a…